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As AI accelerates change across economies and workplaces, much of the focus has been on the technology itself. But new research from the McKinsey Health Institute and the World Economic Forum suggests that an equally important—and often overlooked—source of value lies closer to home: our brains.

The concept of the brain economy reflects a shift in how value is understood. Increasingly, economic growth depends not only on physical capital or digital infrastructure but also on brain health and brain skills: our ability to think clearly, adapt to change, collaborate effectively, and make sound judgments in complex environments.

Following extractive summary is from the transcription of the in which McKinsey’s Erica Coe, Jacqueline Brassey, Kana Enomoto, and Lucy Pérez explore what the brain economy is, why pressure on our brains is rising, how AI is raising the bar for human capability, and why investing in brain capital has become a clarion call for leaders, businesses, and societies.  The insights form the interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What is the brain economy—and why does it matter now?  The brain economy is really about one thing. Strong brains power strong economies. And so, increasingly, we’re seeing that value creation comes from what we can imagine, design, connect with our brains versus what we make with our hands.

Why are our brains under so much pressure right now?   If we think about the impact that the pandemic had on rates of anxiety and depression and other brain health conditions worldwide, we were already at a point of increased burden. Then you put on top of that the perfect storm that we’re facing right now of demographic, technological, and scientific change. Add to that geopolitical and economic uncertainty, an aging population, and the rising disease burden, and we’re talking about a real strain on our brains across the entire lifespan.

Brain health and brain skills—and why you need both.  Brain capital is the sum of brain health and brain skills. Brain health is not just the absence of disease. It’s also positive brain functioning: our cognitive abilities and ability to function in daily life. That’s the foundation. On top of that, there are skills we can learn starting at a very young age that will strengthen our mental capacity, give us more resilience, and even give us the ability to take on new situations and offset cognitive decline.

AI doesn’t replace humans—it raises the bar.  In the age of artificial intelligence, you need a concomitant investment in human intelligence. To take advantage of what AI is able to deliver for humanity and for our societies to be safe, cohesive, and thriving, we need humanity to work side by side with the technology, to understand what it’s getting, to be able to drive the direction, and to make ethical judgments of how to use that power and information.

The economic case for investing in brain capital.  Just by scaling existing interventions, we could reclaim 260 million years of healthy life and unlock $6.2 trillion in GDP gains by 2050. And that’s just by addressing the existing disease burden around brain health conditions. When you couple that with investing in brain skills and unlocking our collective peak brain performance, the value at stake increases even more.

What can leaders do today to help build brain capital for the future? Leaders have the keys in their hands. They can do a lot. Start by role modeling. This is really about intentionally and consciously making the decision to put brain health at the heart of how you run your business. And it starts with taking care of your own brain health and showing others how you do that.

What the future could look like if we get this right.  If we invest in brain capital, we can build societies that are more innovative, more resilient, and human centered.

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When technology journalist Cory Doctorow coined a new term to describe how the consumer experience on platforms such as Amazon, Facebook, and Google has degraded over time, his observations resonated so widely that the American Dialect Society named enshittification its word of the year in 2023.

Doctorow argued that platform operators follow a predictable pattern: At the outset, they create a compelling user experience to build an installed base and establish high switching costs. Next, they exploit those users in order to gain revenue for their business customers, such as by prioritizing ads and paid content rather than what is most relevant to the user. Finally, when users and business customers are locked in, platforms squeeze both sides to maximize their own profits, and everyone’s experience worsens.

While Doctorow focused his ire on platforms, we see similar dynamics at play in traditional industries, where making physical products “smart” by adding digital capabilities has paved the way for manufacturers to similarly lock in and squeeze customers. We contend that building internet connectivity, sensors, firmware, software, and data analytics into physical products has enabled digital business models that unlock new revenue streams — and, too often, lead businesses down a new pathway to enshittification.

Digital capabilities and the new features that they enable are often initially welcomed by customers while being touted by executives as creating new value. But digital features that give manufacturers unprecedented access to and control of products long after customers have taken ownership have become a tempting avenue to extract more revenue by exploiting that control.

Seeking to capture customers with an attractive offering and then exploiting them while their experience degrades is just the latest manifestation of corporate greed. It’s no accident that enshittification emerged as the dust settled from the winner-takes-all platform battles that left Amazon, Facebook, and Google as the dominant players in e-commerce, social media, and search, respectively. 

Taking advantage of the digital enablement of physical products to squeeze more value from customers may be more insidious and irreversible than doing so on platforms, given such products’ dependencies on both the digital and physical worlds. With platforms, once a user experiences degradation, they can switch apps, use ad blockers, or even stop using the app altogether (although business customers often have too much to lose by leaving). In contrast, customers of physical goods have often made significant financial investments in those products, such as appliances, automobiles, and even heavy equipment, so opting out may not be a practical option. While many platform users have grudgingly accepted the cynical bargain that “you are the product,” the reputational risk to companies that overexploit digital control of physical products may be greater because doing so violates customers’ powerful sense of ownership.

Digital connectivity and other features can delight customers with richer functionality and convenience. Companies that remain focused on using technology to improve the customer experience will build customer trust accordingly. Those that instead exploit their digital control and data access, on the other hand, risk their brand reputations and potentially their long-term health.

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According to the author he was not at the launch site with his former NASA colleagues on January 28, 1986, when the space shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after takeoff. Less than two years after wrapping up his own shuttle mission, he was at work at Bell Labs as the national tragedy that claimed the lives of all seven crew members unfolded. When his assistant rushed into his office with the news, he was shocked.

The goal of Challenger, after all, was to make spaceflight, to the extent reasonably possible, routine.  But physics itself dictates that spaceflight is always extraordinary and never without risk. To reach orbit, a spacecraft must fly roughly 100 times faster than an airplane, demanding 10,000 times more energy.  Other missions, including STS-107’s doomed attempt at reentry in 2003 after Columbia sustained damage during launch, have also ended in tragedy, costing the lives.

Yet humanity’s drive to explore remains undiminished. We’re preparing to live permanently on the moon and, one day, on Mars. What once required vast government programs is now increasingly the domain of private industry, which is lowering costs and broadening access to space. But this new era raises important questions: What level of risk is acceptable? And how do we manage it responsibly?

Investigations of both the Challenger and Columbia disasters showed that their causes were not mysterious new risks; they were known risks that had not been properly managed. If we can effectively control the known risks, we may find the unknown ones acceptable.  The author believe we can. 

During his time at NASA, two elements proved vital to managing risk. First, leadership must be unwaveringly committed to safety.   It’s one thing to say that safety comes first, but it’s quite another to hold that line when the pressure mounts.  Second, the goal of safety must be owned by everyone. A culture of open communication, where lessons learned are shared and not hidden, is essential. The aviation industry has long embraced this mindset, encouraging pilots to discuss errors so others can learn from them. Spaceflight should be no different.  Teamwork, too, is at the heart of mission success.

The lessons of Challenger, Columbia, Apollo 13, and the Solar Max satellite continue to resonate in the halls of NASA and, we hope, in the corporate boardrooms where decisions about our space program are increasingly being made. They also still resonate in the classrooms of engineering professors like the author.

Today’s challenges demand more than a narrow foundation in a science or engineering field. Space systems are inherently interdisciplinary. Experts in propulsion, structures, communications, materials, artificial intelligence, and more must work as one. While technical knowledge is critical, collaboration, leadership, ethics, and program management are just as essential.

Spaceflight demands judgment, teamwork, and an instinct for managing the unknown—traits that develop only through experience and mentorship. As educators, our job is to help students gain knowledge and the wisdom to use it well.  If we do that, the explorers who follow will chart new worlds with better tools and the breadth and depth of experience needed to make sound judgments in critical moments. Their success will prove once again that our greatest strength is the human collaboration behind every mission.

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When vying for a C-suite role, you’ll need to win over many different stakeholders: board members, the CEO (existing or outgoing), executive peers, and external parties like customers and shareholders who might weigh in on the decision. But all candidates, even internal ones, must prepare for another set of increasingly powerful gatekeepers: professional recruiters and assessors.

To impress these outside hiring experts (as well as others involved in the process), we recommend you prepare in five key ways: 

1. Adopt a Development Mindset.  The prospect of multipart tests and conversations with people who don’t have deep expertise in the work you do can feel unduly onerous—a bit like a baseball player being coached for hours on hitting by someone who’s never been up to bat.  But you should shift to a more positive mindset and think of the process as an individualized career strategy session that will yield benefits even if you don’t secure the target job, because you’ll learn something to help you win the next one. Getting ready for recruiters gives you the chance to formulate a personal go-to-market plan, glean insights from assessments, think through and flesh out your leadership story in interviews, and receive helpful feedback from reference requests. The process is almost always an eye-opener, helping candidates better understand how others perceive them—and how they perceive themselves.
2. Craft a Bold Vision Memo.  When James Citrin, who leads Spencer Stuart’s CEO practice, advises on succession, he asks all the contenders to write a five-page vision memo—what they’ll achieve and how, including strategy, operating moves, and financial performance. “Then the board can look at each candidate as a representation of alternative futures,” he says. If you’re up for a C-suite role, do the same: Develop a vision for your remit that tackles critical pain points, aligns with the company’s long-term goals, and shows you can execute and adapt.
3. Anticipate Every Assessment.  Decades ago, charisma, competence, and great communications skills might have been enough to win a C-suite role. Today, boards, CEOs, and other evaluators feel a responsibility to go deeper, with rigorous assessments that rate leaders’ skills, capabilities, alignment, and potential. These tools aim to depersonalize the process—not to strip away personality but to provide objective comparisons among candidates on a host of measures. The CEO prospects the authors have worked with have experienced 23 different types of assessments! They have identified several of the most commonly used and have advice on how to prepare for each, both before and during the evaluation process.  These are:  psychometric test, case studies and simulations, competency assessments, proprietary diagnostic tools, cultural-fit analyses, and 360-degree reviews.
4. Delve Deep for Interviews.  Executive recruiters are perhaps best known for running exhaustive behavioral interviews that explore candidates’ past experiences, including how they respond to challenges and drive growth or transformation. To discern how you show up as a leader, they are likely to ask about all your prior jobs, bosses, and teams; your strengths and weaknesses; and your accomplishments and mistakes.  The authors’ advice is to control what you can—that is, how you show up—and answer with disciplined authenticity. To prepare, contemplate your life and career in advance, reflecting on each role you’ve had, identifying patterns of success and growth, and building a small portfolio of STAR (situation, task, action, result) examples tied explicitly to the target job. Include setbacks and what they taught you.
5. Line Up Strong References.  Recruiters don’t just interview you; they triangulate you. They call former colleagues, direct reports, and bosses. Assume they will also contact people you didn’t list, back-channeling through industry contacts to surface additional insights and red flags. For this reason, you need a broad, credible bench of advocates inside and outside the company. Ideally you’ve been investing in relationships for years—across your current or target organization and through external networks of peers, mentors, and coaches. But you’ll need to devote extra time to curating with intent, picking references who have seen you demonstrate the exact capabilities the next role requires and briefing them on the position, why you’re a fit, and the specific examples of your work together that they might cite to help your cause.

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We’re in the thick of the AI revolution, but we might look back on January 2014 as one of the most pivotal moments in business history. That was the month that Demis Hassabis sold his AI company, DeepMind, to Google. He rebuffed a higher offer from Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, and the acquisition scared Elon Musk so much that he decided to launch a rival company with Sam Altman, now called OpenAI. 

Fast forward to today, and Hassabis is still the one to beat. He runs all of Google’s AI initiatives, including Gemini, which is quickly eating away at OpenAI’s user base. In his spare time, Hassabis won a Nobel Prize, and he runs a startup called Isomorphic that wants to solve all disease with AI. 

In a new episode of Fortune 500: Titans and Disruptors of Industry, Fortune’s Editor-in-Chief Alyson Shontell sat down with Demis at the World Economic Forum in Davos to learn where he thinks the future is heading.  Here’s some of what they discussed during their 45-minute conversation:

Hassabis has always been interested in things like astronomy, cosmology, physics as a kid, because he  always been interested in the big questions. What’s actually happening here in the universe? The nature of consciousness, all of these types of things. And then for him, for chess, he also loves games. He loves strategy. He ended up training his own mind by playing chess as a kid, very seriously. 

And then that got him thinking about thinking—and how does the brain work? And then he has combined all that together. That sort of led him to AI and computers, and AI being a way to understand our own minds, but also a perfect tool for science and understanding the universe out there.

Hassabis’ decision to sell DeepMind to Google.  We did, actually, those of us that were involved in the science. We started DeepMind in 2010, which was 15+ years ago now, and nobody was talking about AI. But we knew, and we set out with the mission of solving intelligence and then using it to solve everything else.   So we wanted to be the first company to build artificial general intelligence. And the main thing we wanted to apply it to was solving scientific problems. So when Google came along in 2014—and it was actually driven by Larry at the time, Larry Page, who was the CEO—we knew that in some ways we were sort of underselling.   But, on the other hand, what mattered to him was not the money, it was the mission, and being able to accelerate our progress towards artificial general intelligence and answering these scientific questions that we were trying to solve. And he felt that teaming up with Google would accelerate that, mostly because they had obviously enormous compute power, and we see today how important that is for developing intelligence.

The development of AlphaFold—and the spin-off of drug-discovery platform Isomorphic was another moon shot that got him to a Nobel Prize, folded all 200 million proteins known to science, and then put that on a huge database with the European Bioinformatics Institute. And for free, into the world for everyone to use. So now over 3 million researchers around the world make use of AlphaFold every day.

His one of the skills is bringing together amazing, world class interdisciplinary teams. He loved managing those teams. He loves composing those management teams together.  If we take Isomorphic, for example, we’ve blended top biologists and chemists along with top machine learning and engineering. And I think there’s a lot of magic that happens when you have these kinds of interdisciplinary groups. 

How Hassabis helped Google catch up to increased competition in the AI race  According to him, we had two world class groups in original DeepMind and Google Brain. And actually, he thinks often, as a collective, they don’t get enough credit for the fact that he thinks about 90% of the modern AI industries are built on technology or discoveries made by one of those two groups. From Transformers to AlphaGo and deep reinforcement learning. So we have, and we still have, I think, the deepest and broadest research bench. So we have incredible talent. I think, better than anywhere else in the world by a long way. 

He is a very collaborative person. He is very open minded about different ways of working and he always looking to improve as well. One of the watch words he lives by is this Japanese word, Kaizen, that he loves. Which is sort of striving for continual self-improvement. And that’s what he always try to do. 

And he thinks one of the things they did—one of the things he is very proud of—is getting the shipping culture going and sort of rediscovering, he guesses, the golden era of Google, back 10, 15 years ago and taking risks. Calculated risk, shipping things fast, and being innovative. And he thinks that’s all working out really well now, whilst at the same time being thoughtful and scientific about and rigorous about what we put out in the world, whether that’s engineering or scientifically. And he thinks, and he hopes, they are getting that balance right.

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AI can be great for many things at work: handling mundane tasks, increasing efficiency and helping us prioritize the work that genuinely requires a human touch. At the same time, a mounting body of evidence suggests that AI is driving an employee engagement crisis that threatens the future of work.

A 2025 peer-reviewed study in Behavioral Sciences found that employee-AI collaboration in the workplace can increase feelings of loneliness, exacerbating emotional fatigue and leading to behaviors that directly erode engagement at work. Employees sense it too. Over half of all workers are worried, and 33% across all age groups (40% among 18- to 29-year-olds) are overwhelmed, about how AI will impact the future of work, according to a 2024 Pew Research survey of U.S. workers.

Leaders who blindly push AI adoption risk massively weakening the core drivers of employee engagement: growth opportunities, interpersonal skills, human connection and purpose. Here are five ways AI is eroding employee engagement, and what conscientious leaders can do about it.

1. AI Is Blocking Career Growth For Young Professionals.  What leaders can do: Strengthen team integration during the first 90 days for new hires, especially young professionals. Protect time for all employees to provide and receive mentorship (including “reverse mentoring,” where younger workers mentor more senior colleagues), rather than assuming it will happen organically.
2. Employees Are Overloaded.  What leaders can do: Leverage the cost savings to decrease workload for the remaining team members. Implement protected focus time and meeting-free days for all team members. If people feel they are making progress and having an actual impact at work, employee engagement will bounce back.
3. AI Is Making Work Overly Transactional.  What leaders can do: Implement weekly or monthly meaning-making practices during team meetings (e.g., having team members share what brought them to the work they do). Redefine purpose around what humans uniquely contribute. Celebrate human growth and wins (including learning through failure) over efficiency- and productivity-based achievements.
4. AI Collaboration Is Fueling Workplace Loneliness.  What leaders can do: Create more opportunities for employees to interact and bond in social, non-work-related ways. Track and measure team connections and the strength of team relationships alongside productivity. 
5. AI Is Jeopardizing Mission-Critical Human Skills.  What leaders can do: Invest in professional and leadership development, specifically around human skills. Make interpersonal skill-building explicit, valued and rewarded by integrating it into everyone’s training and growth plans.

Protecting Employee Engagement As AI Transforms Work.  Growth opportunities, human connection and interpersonal capabilities drive employee engagement, which, in turn, jeopardizes the fiscal bottom line. When AI adoption undermines these drivers, employee engagement suffers and work becomes demoralizing and painful for everyone.  But it’s not all bad news. All these problems are solvable. Conscientious leaders who invest in learning and development, protect time for human connection and track engagement alongside productivity will reap the benefits of AI adoption without sacrificing their people or their mid- and long-term bottom line.

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Your first 90 days on a job are often the most important. That’s where you lay the foundation for the years to come and learn more about how your skills best fit into the organization. That’s just as true when you’re launching a startup.

The early days of an entrepreneurial endeavor, especially in the fast-growing consulting space, not only help to define how the business is received, but also its trajectory. As the mad dash begins for clients, there are fundamentals that you’ll need to pay attention to and long-term planning you’ll need to focus on at the same time.  8 Things You Need to Do in the First 90 Days of Launching Your Consulting Business are:

1. Define your niche.  Increasingly, the most successful consulting companies are the ones that are specific about who they serve and which problems they solve. “Clients prefer boutique firms offering regulatory expertise, sector specialization, and competitive pricing, driving growth in niche consulting segments,” says research firm StartUs Insights. Tighten your focus instead of trying to be all things to all clients.
2. Make sure your company name isn’t already spoken for.  It seems a basic step, but as you choose a name for your business, check to ensure that it’s not already being used on the web and on social media. You’ll want a URL that matches the company name, and you should secure social-media accounts on as many platforms as possible, even if you don’t plan to use them immediately, to protect your name.
3. Start networking.  As you launch your own consulting business and begin the search for clients, it’s people you know and people they know who are most likely to be of assistance. “Sixty percent of consultants get their first client through referrals from their network,” writes coaching and training platform Consulting Success. “This isn’t luck—it’s about strategically positioning yourself within your existing professional relationships.”
4. Determine your billing model.  Some consulting firm founders prefer billing by the hour. Others prefer to charge a lump sum for a project. And some focus on intangibles, factors that make a client’s life easier. Just remember that you can switch models down the road. Here are some helpful formulas to consult when trying to determine what to charge. 
5. Create a potential client list—then filter it.  It’s not just enough to build a list of companies you think would benefit from your expertise. You’ll also need to determine which of those are worth your time, writes Roland Eva, a U.K.-based business growth consultant. After you’ve assembled a list of the types of clients you want to work with, determine which will not balk when they hear your fee.  The idea is to avoid wasting your time with companies that are unlikely to be able to afford your services.
6. Fine-tune your tech skills.  As you run down the list of things to consider when starting a consulting firm, mastering Excel and PowerPoint might not be something you think about. It should be.
7. Find an accountant and a lawyer.  Hiring experts to handle your startup’s finances and legal issues can remove a lot of stress from your shoulders, letting you focus on core business aspects. These don’t need to be full-time employees.
8. Consider an accountability partner.  This is something that’s more applicable to solo entrepreneurs. If you aren’t planning to start your consulting firm with a business partner or two, it could be worth your while to find an accountability partner. That’s someone with whom you can set up short, daily (or weekly) calls during the first few months of your business to gain outside insight that helps keep your startup on track. This could be a former colleague or mentor. Or you could find an accountability partner by getting involved with a local trade association, business owner group, or networking group.

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For decades, the world has looked to Silicon Valley as the epicentre of innovation. The mythology is familiar: capital-rich investors, a culture of risk-taking and a tightly knit ecosystem that turns ordinary ideas into global companies. But while the Valley’s influence remains undeniable, a quieter shift is underway, one that is redefining who gets to build, who gets funded and where transformative businesses emerge.

Across regional markets such as the Middle East, East Africa, Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia, founders are creating companies with global ambition but local grounding. They are operating without the luxury of abundant venture capital, yet they are solving more complex problems, navigating more fragmented systems and often achieving profitability earlier than their Silicon Valley counterparts. Their stories signal a new era in entrepreneurship, one that is more distributed, more resilient and more relevant to the world’s future.

1. The rise of the regional founder.  In regions where venture funding is limited or unevenly distributed, entrepreneurs grow up with a different type of conditioning. They learn to build with scarcity instead of abundance. They develop cross-sector fluency because they must negotiate with governments, work around outdated infrastructure and build trust in markets where institutions are still evolving.  This creates founders who think differently. They are less obsessed with blitzscaling and more focused on designing businesses that can survive political volatility, currency fluctuations and conservative consumer behavior. Their companies often emerge stronger, not in spite of those constraints, but because of them.  The rise of the regional founder is not a trend driven by hype or a temporary reaction to Silicon Valley’s slowdowns. It is the result of a demographic shift, a digital shift and a geopolitical shift all converging at once. New power centers are forming, and the entrepreneurs building within them are gaining global attention.
2. Innovation beyond capital.  One of the biggest misconceptions about regional markets is that innovation can only grow where capital flows freely. In reality, many of the most creative and durable solutions come from environments where capital is scarce.  When founders cannot rely on endless fundraising rounds, they prioritise immediate value creation. They build products with clearer unit economics, they launch earlier and they iterate directly with customers instead of chasing investor expectations. In many markets, venture capital is not the starting point but a strategic accelerant once the business already has traction and revenue.
3. Navigating complexity with cultural intelligence.  Regional founders operate within cultural, tribal, political and familial structures that Silicon Valley rarely needs to consider. Success depends on understanding how influence works, how relationships form and how trust is built.  This is cultural intelligence, not in the corporate soft-skill sense, but as a strategic business competency.  Founders working between local governments, international organizations and private sector actors often act as translators across worlds. They innovate not only in technology but in governance, social design and community trust. This multidimensional skill set is becoming increasingly valuable as global markets become more interconnected and more fragmented at the same time.  In many cases, the ability to operate within complexity is what gives regional founders a competitive edge.
4. Creating impact in markets that need it most.  While Silicon Valley has historically built products for convenience, founders in emerging and regional markets are often building for necessity. They are addressing gaps in healthcare access, financial inclusion, energy, transportation and public sector infrastructure. Their innovations don’t just create economic growth; they improve safety, mobility, education and quality of life.  This kind of impact is not theoretical. It is visible, measurable and transformative.
5. The new blueprint for global growth.  As economic power spreads beyond traditional centers, regional founders are increasingly positioned to compete globally. They bring with them distinct advantages: a deeper understanding of frontier markets, more flexible business models and resilience forged through real-world constraints.  Their companies are scaling through partnerships rather than hyper-growth, through cross-border collaboration rather than single-ecosystem dependency. They are expanding into markets that Silicon Valley has historically overlooked because they require local insight, political navigation or cultural fluency.  This is the new blueprint: businesses built from the ground up with both local depth and international reach.
6. A more distributed future of entrepreneurship.  The idea that innovation must be concentrated in one geographical hub is becoming obsolete. Technology is portable. Talent is global. And the problems most worth solving are no longer centered in the places with the most capital. Regional founders, whether they’re building in Dubai, Erbil, Baghdad, Doha, Nairobi, Riyadh or Belgrade, represent a new era of entrepreneurship. They combine ambition with pragmatism, creativity with resilience and cultural understanding with global perspective.

As capital, credibility and attention diversify, the world will increasingly turn toward these founders, not as exceptions, but as leaders of the next chapter of global innovation.